Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia<\/a> campaign on Tuesday, beating Nicolas Almagro 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-3 in second round action at Foro Italico in two hours and two minutes.<\/strong><\/p>\nNovak raced through the opening set in 29 minutes, breaking twice for 6-1.<\/p>\n
Games went with serve in the second set. Nole built a 5-2 lead in a tie-breaker, but Almagro made him work hard for the win. The Spaniard won five points in a row to force a decider.<\/p>\n
A break in the eighth game of the third set was enough for the Belgrade native, who sealed his 150th clay-court victory and improved to a perfect 4-0 H2H record with Almagro.<\/p>\n
“At the end of the day it’s a win after three weeks with no official match,”<\/strong> said Djokovic. “In the important moments today, I did feel a little bit uncomfortable. Maybe it’s due to a lack of competitive play in the past couple of weeks. But I won against a quality player, who knows how to play on the big stage. All in all, it was a great test. I was aware he was going to present a great challenge. Hopefully a day off will allow to spend some more time on the court, working to get better in the next one.”<\/strong><\/p>\nThe world no.1 won 78 per cent of his first-serve points and broke three times to advance into the last 16. He was 6\/7 on net approaches.<\/p>\n
Match statistics<\/u>: aces (12-10), double faults (0-2), winners (40-29), unforced errors (21-32), total points won (97-77).<\/p>\n
Novak was playing his first match since lifting the trophy in Monte-Carlo last month, when he became the first player to win the opening three Masters 1000 events of the season.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Serb, who claimed his 31st win in 2015, goes on to face Thomaz Bellucci on Thursday. The Brazilian qualifier upset Roberto Bautista Agut (ESP, 14).
\n<\/strong><\/p>\nPhoto: Getty Images<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top seed and defending champion beat Nicolas Almagro 6-1, 6-7 (5), 6-3 to reach the last 16 at the Internazionali BNL d\u2019Italia on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":69006,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[101012177,101011546,101012444,101011659,113],"class_list":["post-69009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tennis","tag-atp-1000-en","tag-defending-champion-en","tag-internazionali-bnl-ditalia-en","tag-rome-2015-en","tag-second-round"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69009"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69053,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69009\/revisions\/69053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novakdjokovic.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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